ASIA, a'shl-a. The largest division of land on the globe. and the east portion of the Eur asian continent, of which it embraces more than four-fifths. lts area, exclusive of islands, is about 16,000.000 square miles; or, including islands, is about 17.000.000 square miles, equal to about one third of the land area of the globe, and its popu lation is estimated at upward of 850,000,000. This enormous continental mass, with the excep tion of a territory in the extreme northeast, about as large as the area of England, lies in the northern division of the Eastern Hemisphere, while the island,, commonly associated with it extend on the southeast across the Equator. On three sides it is surrounded by the ocean, but on the west it joins Europe, the line of separa tion bet \Nem) them being commonly accepted as the Ural Mountains, an irregular line from their south end to the north end of the Caspian Sea, and thence the Caucasus Range to the Black Sea. The whole length of the continent, measured along a parallel of latitude, from the Dardanelles to the Japan Islands, from longitude 26° E. to longitude 130° E., is 5500 miles; its breadth from its southernmost point, the extremity of Malacca to Cape Tclelyuskin, in Siberia, its northernmost point, from latitude 1° 15' N. to latitude 77° 37' N. is 5100 miles, although with its islands it extends to latitude 10° S. By means of the istImms of Suez, Asia has a slight connection with Africa, from which it is sepa rated by the narrow Red Sea, occupying a rift valley of comparatively recent formation. The continent has an average elevation above the sea of over 3000 feet. The coast-line is about :33,000 miles in length. and on thesouth and east is greatly diversified by seas, bays, and gulfs, affording ad vantages to navigation and commerce farsuperior to those of Africa and South America, but inferior to those possessed by Europe and North America. The indented and broken northern coast is not available for navigation, because of being ice bound throughout the greater part of the year.
Asia is bounded northward by the Arctic Ocean, eastward by the Pacific Ocean, southward by the Indian Ocean. and westward by Europe, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Mediterrane an, and the Red Sea. On the extreme northeast, it is separated from North America only by the narrow Bering Strait, about 40 miles wide. On the southeast, the vast eastern archipelago, com prising numerous great islands, Luzon and Min danao in the Philippines, Sumatra, Borneo, Java, Celebes, New Guinea, and hundreds of smaller ones, extends toward Australia. The body of the continent may be regarded as a trapezi um, of which the projections, conshiting of several large peninsulas, bear some resemblance to those of Europe, though in Asia everything is on a greater scale. On the west is the peninsula of Asia Minor, or Anatolia, separated from Europe by the Bosporus, the Sea of Marmora, and the Dardanelles, with the Black Sea on the north, the ..Egean Sea on the west, and the Levant (the easternmost part of the Mediterranean) on the south. On the south of Asia, Arabia may be con sidered as a counterpart of the Iberian Peninsula ; Italy, with its neighboring island, Sicily, is repre sented by India and Ceylon ; and as the broken Grecian Peninsula in Europe has numerous isl ands extending toward Asia on the southeast, so in Asia, the .Malay Peninsula has an island con nection with Australia on the southwest by means of the eastern archipelago. The eastern coast of Asia is characterized by the deep in dentations made by the Pacific Ocean, forming the China Sea on the southeast, and the Yellow, Japan, Okhotsk, and Bering Seas on the east, all island-bound, and the last four separated respec tively by the Peninsula of Korea, the island of Saghalin, and the Peninsula of Kamchatka. On the north the Siberian coasts are also deeply indented, but rather by the embouchures of large rivers than by arms of the sea.